This Tech Moves Your Entire PC Interface to Virtual Reality

Share Screen

If you’ve ever used a collaboration tool for work or school, you have likely come across this nifty feature that allows you to share screens with a colleague or teammate while on a voice call or live chat. It’s a great feature—in theory.

But when you’re already trying very hard to manage your own desktop and you now have to split the limited screen real estate with someone else’s screen, you can’t help but feel a little clustered. Really, the entire collaborative experience feels cluttered and unwieldy.

Enter BigScreen and the burgeoning industry of virtual reality (VR), which will enable users to basically use and share their entire desktops in VR.

You can sign up for beta tests here.

“Our goal is to let you use your entire desktop, with anyone, in virtual reality,” Darshan Shankar, who heads the project, said. “Why use your computer on a tiny 15″ screen when you could use BigScreen and get massive screens of infinite size? Anything that you can do on your computer – browsing the web, watching videos, playing video games, and even productive work – you can do in VR on massive screens with BigScreen.”

BigScreen

To clarify, BigScreen doesn’t simply enable you to access apps or web pages in VR. What it does is bring your entire computer into it. This means you can pull up files when you want, launch programs, run apps—anything and everything that you do on your computer is accessible through it, including sharing it with other users in the same virtual environment.

“We allow you to experience, literally, the entire world of digital content in BigScreen, in VR, with your friends.”

It’s being heralded as 'the desktop of the future,' intended to provide a seamless and fully functional experience within the VR world.

According to David Jagneaux, who experienced the technology during its alpha demonstration, “…the biggest thing that stood out to me was just how seamless and polished it already was. I didn’t get disconnected nor did I notice much lag. Everything I wanted to do worked.”

“We’ll eventually be adding other features as well. You’ll be able to easily move and adjust the screen in front of you, use a laser pointer, and even customize your avatars,” adds Shankar.